Vertical head adaptor for horizontal mill alignment?

[lucky7]

Should I scrape an adapter for a vertical milling head to be grafted onto a mill similar to a K&T #1 size horizontal at exactly 90deg or a little off to allow for sag (or other factor)? Weight of head will be forward of adaptor.

thanks for advice.

 

[Richard King]

Depends on how flat the back side is. Check it in a plate first. If you have a test bar that will fit in the taper or in a collet so you check the spindle alignment to the bolt on surface of the milling head. A picture would be nice. I am assuming your mill has drilled and tapped holes in the face where it will bolt on?

 

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Is the head a permanent addition or will it be coming on and off regularly ?

Regards Tyrone.

 

[lucky7]

Removable, no idea how frequently I’ll actually do it.

Column will have tapped holes shortly for the vertical head as soon as I can borrow some time on a friends #3 sized horizontal mill.

 

[eKretz]

This one would probably fall under "try and see" for me. With good solid mounting it probably shouldn't need any compensation, but that will depend on weight and stiffness of the housing. I don't think there's a good way to predict that. It's easy enough to make it dead 90° then bolt it on and check alignment. If you have to tweak it from there, check and mark it on the machine and take it off and tweak it in with some scraping.

 

[Richard King]

Lets see some photo's of your mill and head..

This what I consider a Vertical Head for a Horizontal mill

 

[M.B. Naegle]

You WANT it at 90 degrees during operation, but wither that equates to having the individual pieces scraped to 90 degrees depends on the mill in question.

AFAIK, sag from weight/gravity would be the primary reason to scrape at another angle, so if it was me, I would inspect the individual pieces on granite and see how square they measure, and then assemble it and see if there is a difference.

In some cases, you may also need to consider the load when cutting, but in general I would consider that as designed into the mass and shape of the castings. IOW, if it's lined up perfectly before a cut, and is flexing whatever amount while cutting, it's not an alignment issue so much as a using-too-hard issue.

 

[Richard King]

Should I scrape an adapter for a vertical milling head to be grafted onto a mill similar to a K&T #1 size horizontal at exactly 90deg or a little off to allow for sag (or other factor)? Weight of head will be forward of adaptor.

thanks for advice.

Lucky what did you do or discover on the head alignment. I've been waiting for your reply ????

 

[lucky7]

Richard, job‘s not done yet. Still working for a living which gets in the way of fun little projects like this one...

 

[ballen]

I recall Franz Singer told me that they scrape the Deckel headstocks to droop down a bit, so the cutting forces lift the horizontal and vertical spindles into the correct alignment. Rich, does that sound right? Or do you think I'm remembering it wrongly?